Orchids and Stone

by Lisa Preston

  “Do you recall her last name?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember where her family lived? Would your mother perhaps be in touch with her? You’ve said your mom saved Suzanne’s old stuff. Do you think the girl’s old contact information might be there? A childhood phone number or address might still be her parents’ place. Or hers, even.” He gave a self-deprecating grin. “Some people still live in the house where they grew up.”

  “If she’s moved—and she probably has—then her old information won’t put me in touch with her. She may have gotten married, changed her last name, but I don’t even remember what her last name was back then. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Alumnus records,” Vic said. “Did Lindsay graduate?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. I didn’t.”

  He smiled and rubbed her neck. “Well, you can if you want to. Entirely up to you. Always was. But since you’re not an alumna …”

  “And Thea’s the only graduate I know from Western Washington U.”

  “Oh, I see,” Vic said, his gaze slung sideways as always when he was lost in thought. “Maybe the University office won’t be obstinate. They might give you contact info on her right over the phone even though you aren’t an alumna.”

  “Will you help me?”

  He left her side and paced around the front of her truck, tapping the hood with a finger, and asking as he circled, “Is all this, in truth, about Suzanne?”

  She glared at him through the windshield, then the passenger’s window, glad for the excuse to raise her voice. “Neither, Vic. One’s got nothing to do with the other.”

  He opened the truck’s passenger’s side and sank to the bench seat. “I don’t believe that,” he said, shutting the door too hard.

  The impound yard, within a vast, slatted, chain-link compound, appeared to be part compressed parking lot, part wrecking yard. Beyond the small booth at the entry driveway, flatbeds and standard-hooking tow trucks rumbled at the ready or jockeyed about, lowering impounded vehicles into position. Vic stared like a little boy fascinated with big trucks.

  “I’d no idea what it was like here,” he marveled, as they identified themselves to a man in a stained undershirt at the security booth. They shouted to be heard over the lot supervisor’s crackling radio and an idling diesel tow truck behind him.

  “And you have no idea what it was like being in Gitmo,” she said, pulling her pickup over to park in the dust where the lot boss sent them.

  Vic blinked. “No, I don’t. Tell me, what was it like, your hour in jail?”

  Instead of answering, she pointed down a row of impounded cars to a sad new version of Vic’s old Honda. Crumpled fenders, missing bits of plastic in the grille and lights, with damage to the rear and right quarter panel as well. His vehicle looked forlorn amid the other impounds, some nice, some nasty. All pushed into tight rows as though they’d lost their eligibility to hold premium space in Normal Vehicle World, where cars are allotted an eight-foot-wide lane each.

  Peering into the Honda’s backseat, surprise and relief flushed through with the sight of her coil nailer and loaded tool belt on the seat. She grabbed her tools and stowed them under her truck canopy.

  “It might be drivable once the parts hanging onto the front tire are pushed away.” She tried not to look at Vic’s face, warned herself not to, and then looked.

  His jaw worked, the muscles in the side of his face bopping. Standing at the Honda’s front bumper, Vic pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, as though he found it a toss-up between eyeing the mess or squinting to examine the wreck with poor vision.

  “Who’s the only person you know who has gloves in her glove box?” Daphne said. But Vic wouldn’t play, his usual easy countenance lost.

  She went back to her truck and returned, pulling on leather work gloves, then yanking detritus off the Honda’s left front wheel. Parts of the plastic broke but she couldn’t manually clear away the stiff, wrenched fender. Fetching back to her truck, Daphne pulled her shingler’s hammer from her tool belt.

  While Vic stood in silence, Daphne hacked the remaining obstructive plastic off the Honda with her hammer’s adze. “There.” She opened her truck’s topper and threw the broken bits of car body into the bed.

  Vic stood, gloomy, staring at his car. It had been his father’s. He wasn’t sentimental about possessions, but he took care of things, made them last. And his budget had been tight ever since Cassandra threw him out of their marriage and he’d moved back home. Soon after, his father had to be placed in the care facility, straining Vic’s finances to the near-breaking point.

  Daphne felt guilty in her relative wealth. Flipping the heavy hammer in a lazy arc, she caught it when the blue cushioned handle spun opposite the forged head. It was a good hammer, a great one. She’d had it close to a decade. The toothed, gripping face was milled, forming one solid piece within the steel handle. A thumbscrew let her slide a thin cutting blade along the adze for fine work, and the adze could hatchet away serious material. The handle was coated in a special, shock-absorbing synthetic grip. The label advised users to always wear safety goggles when using a shingler’s hammer but Daphne never heeded the warning.

  “And the window’s gone,” Vic said.

  “Yeah.” Daphne looked away. On the next row, a tow truck driver angled a red convertible into an impound slot beside a navy Lincoln Town Car.

  The navy Lincoln Town Car? She stared across the row of disparate vehicles.

  Could that be the Lincoln Town Car she’d chased? Lowering her hammer, Daphne fit herself sideways past the Honda and the car behind it, then down the aisle, ignoring the tow truck driver’s wave for her to not stand so close while he worked the convertible into a space.

  “Hey, you need to move away.” The shout came from behind her. The lot boss had left his security booth to flag Daphne down.

  She took one giant step back, appreciating the improved view of the big navy blue sedan as the tow truck driver stepped out, glared at her, and worked handles on his truck bed to lower the convertible’s front end.

  The Lincoln Town Car had no license plate, but Daphne wondered if it had carried one starting with a Y. She pictured the man, Guff, driving the Lincoln. Driving too fast. She pictured the woman in the back, one hand holding Minerva Watts, the other gripping Daphne’s Carhartt jacket.

  The tow truck driver released his hook from the convertible’s undercarriage and pushed a lever on his truck, winding his cable back up. Giving Daphne a snarling glance, he handed papers to the lot boss.

  “Hot,” said the driver, pointing to the convertible.

  The man running the impound yard nodded, looking at the paperwork. “Yeah, dude, heard that. Just like the one it’s next to.”

  Daphne looked from one man to the other. “That car’s stolen?”

  “You like that red rocket?” the tow truck driver asked. “It’d look good on you.”

  She shook her head. “The other one.”

  “The Town Car?” the lot boss asked. Surprise showed in his voice over which car attracted her interest.

  “It doesn’t have license plates,” Daphne said.

  The lot boss nodded. “It’s stolen from out of state. The cop took the plates when he had it hooked yesterday. Plates were stolen, too.”

  “Wait,” Daphne said, looking from one man to the other. The tow driver rolled his eyes and climbed into his tow truck. “That car’s stolen and it had stolen license plates on it? I might know that car.”

  The lot boss raised an eyebrow and grinned. “You been in it? Been driving it? Bet that cop would like to talk to you.”

  “What cop?” she asked.

  “The one who called to impound that Lincoln from The Ave yesterday.”

  The Ave, in the University District. Her dread of the traffic when she chased the Lincoln out of Minerva Watts’s neighborhood toward the U District returned with a fresh tingle. When she beckoned for more, the man shrugged again
, waving a hand as his explanation poured forth.

  “The most interesting thing in the cop’s day was a stolen car. He was all proud for checking it out right. Abandoned car, parked along the curb too long. Plate matched the make, model, and color, but he ran the VIN and bingo, hot car out of California wearing a stolen Washington plate from a similar car.”

  “I wasn’t driving it, I followed it. If it’s the same one anyway,” Daphne said, feeling the lot boss’s gaze on her. “Yesterday. The guy driving it stole my jacket. Was there a brown canvas jacket inside? It had my phone and wallet in the pockets.”

  The lot man shook his head.

  “Can I look?” Daphne sidled over to the car to peek into the windows. A few paper napkins lay crumpled on the back seat. She walked all the way around the car. Was it the same one? She could picture the couple seated inside, Minerva Watts beside the woman in the back seat. But how could she know it was the same car? She turned to the lot boss. “Did you look in the trunk?”

  He shook his head. “No keys. Guy’s bringing ’em.”

  She brightened. “Now? The owner’s coming here?”

  “Nah,” he said. “This poor dude in the Midwest somewhere. He gave me a sad story about his mother in California dying and he finds out she signed over all her savings, her pension fund, her house, everything, to some stupid charity right before she died. The car’s the only thing he’ll get out of her estate and only because he was already on the title as an and.”

  Daphne squinted at him. “What?”

  “You know, Joe-and-Jane, instead of Joe-or-Jane. When a title shows a person or another person, then either one can sell it, but when it shows one person and another person, then both people have to sign to sell it.”

  “Oh.” She looked across the cars toward Vic, on his phone.

  “Yeah. Dude’s calling here, telling me it wasn’t the money—guess he’d figured he was going to get some inheritance, his mother had a nice place and funds stashed away—he was just so surprised. Dude’s mother was something like ninety years old and never said anything about this charity before. And to top it off, the dude can’t get in touch with these nonprofit folks, like it’s already belly-up or something.”

  “Meaning, if his name wasn’t on the title, the charity would have gotten the car, too?” she asked.

  The lot man nodded. “Stinking charity cleaned out the guy’s mother and she dies and then her car’s stolen. What luck. I guess the Seattle Police contacted him about the car. He was calling here before it even made it to the yard. Told me the whole story.”

  Minerva Watts’s voice pierced Daphne’s memory.

  They’re trying to steal my house and all my money. And my car.

  She pictured the lavender pantsuit and tan raincoat, heard the pleas for help in the Peace Park. And then Daphne thought of them putting the lady into a car—Mrs. Watts’s own car, probably—and imagined the couple taking her to a Ford dealership, quick-selling the car below wholesale price. She stared across the row of cars at Vic. He was too far away for her to read his expression, but she watched him fold his arms across his chest.

  When she waved him over, Vic looked over then back at his car.

  “Sad story,” the lot boss said. “I’ve heard this kind of thing—folks preying on old folks, wrangling what they can out of them, selling them some song and dance.”

  Daphne gulped and felt herself go cold. “Vic!” She turned toward the Honda again, but Vic was just a few strides away.

  “I think the insurance company will require me to get several estimates,” he said. “I hope they don’t total it. It’s an old car and they might not find it worth fixing. But it starts. The damage might be all cosmetic.”

  She stared into the Lincoln and pictured the car evading her, making it through the traffic light, Minerva Watts worried in the backseat, boxes of her things—including her grandmother Miller’s brooch—in the trunk.

  “What is it, Daph?”

  Pointing to the Lincoln, she explained how it was identical to the car those people had used to take Minerva Watts and her things away from her house. It probably was the Lincoln she’d chased. She told him it was owned by a recently deceased old woman in California who signed over her bank accounts and house to a charity that then went defunct. And the car was stolen.

  He raked a hand through his hair and twisted to look back at his Honda.

  “Couldn’t … I mean. Just suppose …” Daphne snapped her mouth shut. No. No way. Not possible, and not her business anyway. Had she been overreacting all this time, about everything regarding Mrs. Watts. But … what if?

  “Couldn’t … ,” she tried again, but faltered as her thoughts ran wild.

  “Couldn’t?” Vic half-encouraged, half-teased.

  “Couldn’t there be a connection?”

  “Between what and what?” he asked.

  “Whatever’s going on with Minerva Watts and whatever happened in California.”

  Vic pursed his lips. “It seems far-fetched. But … possible. Worst-case scenario.”

  Daphne nodded, insistent. “The wrong license plate was on it. The plate was stolen off a similar car. This car was stolen in California,” she said, pointing to papers in the lot boss’s hand.

  “Where was it impounded from?” Vic asked.

  The lot manager looked at his paperwork and gave them an intersection.

  Crunched outside, airbags blown, the Honda was ugly but still drivable. Daphne pressured Vic for all she was worth, pushing until he agreed to drop the car off at the best body shop he knew of, right away. When he protested about insurance and getting estimates, she brushed his arguments away.

  “My accident, my fault. I’m paying for it.”

  When they pulled into the body shop parking lot, he hesitated again. “You shouldn’t pay for it out of your pocket. This is what insurance is for. We should just go through the procedure, see what the insurance company wants to do.”

  “I’ll get your car fixed. I want it fixed. I don’t want this to drag out. Please. I don’t want problems dragging on and on. I want to get clear.”

  The body shop attendant waited with paperwork on a clipboard. Vic nodded at the man, then pulled his phone from his belt clip and handed it to Daphne.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you want to call Thea?”

  “Oh.” She flipped his phone on, wishing it were a smartphone so she could Google. Rolling her lips in, closing her eyes, she walked away from Vic as he signed papers. Back in her truck, Daphne dialed, trying to summon what to say when Thea answered.

  “Hello?” Thea’s voice held the reserve expected for a call from Vic’s phone.

  “It’s Daphne. I—”

  “Hey, you! I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for bitching you out earlier, I—”

  “Oh, stop,” Daphne said. “I’m sorry for being everything you said I was being. I felt pushed and pulled and I think of things being fine and things being catastrophic and I don’t know what’s what, so … wait, I think I’m not apologizing very well. But, Thea, I’m so sor—”

  “Done,” Thea said. “And I have a possible address on Lindsay Wallach for you.”

  “Wallach.” Daphne sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. The last name sounded distantly familiar now that she heard it again. “Now I’m going to find Ross Bouchard. You could do it faster. I won’t have computer access until I get home. Would you find him for me?”

  “Oh, fuck it, Daphne.”

  “Well … I might as well finish, right?”

  “I found this Lindsay woman. I found the Watts woman. You get one person a day out of me.”

  Daphne drummed her fingers on the phone and slumped in her pickup’s seat. “But you could find him?”

  “Now you’re wanting me to show off,” Thea said, her voice demure.

  “You’re always showing off.” Daphne felt a weight drop, just a small one, but the load was lightened as she scribbled down an address for Lindsay Wallach, thanked Thea
, and hung up.

  Vic slid onto the passenger’s seat, studying paperwork from the body shop.

  “I’m going to find Ross Bouchard,” she told him. “I’m going to talk to that boy myself.”

  “Ross Bouchard,” he said. “The guy some people thought killed your sister.”

  She nodded.

  “Then I’m going with you. No argument this time.”

  Daphne smiled and let him take her palm in his. “I don’t have a way to contact him yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “But I will.” She offered her most satisfied smile.

  Vic guessed. “Thea?”

  She nodded. “And she gave me an address on Lindsay Wallach. There’s enough time to go right now.”

  Baskets of bleeding hearts and other flowers lined the porch of the tiny trailer house. There was no answer to Vic’s knock or to Daphne pushing the bell button. She tried to not feel pressured by his glancing at his watch, knowing she’d pressured him to make this quick trip to Lindsay Wallach’s house right away. He had to collect his kids for the weekend.

  Daphne looked at her truck and wondered about leaving a note. She knocked on the thin aluminum door again. Vic tapped his watch with one finger. A melodic voice rose with the rushing-air sound of wind in the evergreens.

  “There’s someone out back,” Daphne said, stepping off the porch and striding for the corner before he could protest.

  She didn’t see the woman, not right away. She saw the weathered slab of plywood hanging on the trailer at the edge of the back deck. On the railing beneath the board, spent candlewicks jutted from puddles of cold, long-melted wax. Numerous faded items curled to the pins tacking them to the plywood—a rustic version of a bulletin board. In one corner dangled a faded purple and gold high school graduation tassel. Old photographs—of a beautiful young woman with feathers in her hair, wearing secondhand clothes—bubbled and delaminated the wood. Notes and cards, close to illegible with age, were tucked above spent candles.

  “Can I help you?” the singsong voice called out from behind apple trees. The woman kinked a hose and the sound of water gushing stopped. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

  “Lindsay Wallach?” Daphne’s voice shook and she stared at the board instead of the woman she was addressing, too stricken to say anything more.